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The End is Nigh

by Aubrey Day
Total Film
February 2007

Set
to become the most successful movie of all time, Pirates
3 is the essential blockbuster of 2007. Producer Jerry
Bruckheimer sets the scene before Johnny Depp shares some secrets
(spoilers
ahead!), in an At World’s End
global
exclusive.

“Well,
you
guys called that right . . .” Jerry Bruckheimer is
congratulating Total Film
for our (hardly sagacious) prediction last year that Pirates
2 would rule the summer. One massive box office
ker-ching
later and we’re going out on a limb again: Pirates
3 could prove the biggest film ever.

“Ah,
I
don’t know about that . . .” grins the producer on
a sunny, breezy January day
in Burbank. “I
don’t make predictions.”
Ah, but we do. Especially with films
that cross the $1 billion mark quicker than The
Return of the King and a series that now has Titanic
in its sights. And, while there are still a couple of
months of post-production work ahead (“Filming only finished
about a week
ago!”), At World’s End
is set to be
bolder and bigger if Johnny Depp’s revelations (coming up . .
.) are any
indication.

“I
never
know what’s going to succeed,” claims Bruckheimer,
somewhat unconvincingly (six
billion box office dollars on the CV and counting . . .). “I
still expect the
worst and hope for the best.” Push him, though, and
he’ll admit: “It all starts
from the screenplay. And a brilliant director and a fantastic
cast.” So, with
all those elements present again, what can we expect from number three?

“Well,
there’s a quest to find Jack. And there are a lot of things
to tie up.” These
‘things’ include the rocky relationship between
Will (Orlando Bloom) and
Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), whose deadly kiss sent Captain Jack into
the jaws
of the kraken and down to Davy Jones’ locker in Dead
Man’s Chest. Working with
Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to
free Jack, the pair also have to face Chinese pirate Sao Feng (Chow
Yun-Fat)
and the vicious Beckett (Tom Hollander), whose East India Trading
Company is
controlling Jones and so rule the waves . . . But beyond the plot
resolutions,
another question remains: is this really the end? Rumors persist of a Pirates
4 . . .

Bruckheimer
shifts in his seat. “This is the end of this
story.” But there might be other stories to come?
“We’re still working it
through . . .”

Trying
to
squeeze anything more definitive from Bruckheimer proves fruitless,
although Depp—in
good spirits as filming wraps—is open to
more outings as Captain
Jack. “Who
knows?” he grins. “They
may go
four, they may go five. You know, if
that’s the case, we’ll get the family back together
again.”

For
the
present, though, it’s over. Soon, the gold-capped teeth will
be removed and the
garrulous lead will segue from cutting a dash to cutting throats in Tim
Burton’s barbarous musical, Sweeney
Todd. Few
are questioning his choices now, as studio suits did when viewing
early
footage of Curse of the Black Pearl.
(What’s with the drunken camp act? And the dreadlocks? And
those teeth?)

As
Bruckheimer yo-ho-hos all the way to the bank and a franchise is
reverse-engineered, courtesy of screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry
Rossio (and
locked-in-the-edit-suite director Gore Verbinski), Depp is in fine
fettle,
reflecting on a role he knows will be his most iconic. “As
you’re coming up
through the ranks, you do these movies and they’d have your
name in a magazine
and it would say, you know, your name and then it would say the name of
the
film,” he says. “When I did Scissorhands,
for a few years it was ‘Johnny Depp (Edward
Scissorhands).’ And I was thinking to myself the
other day, in 15 or 25 or
50 years, is it always going to be Pirates
of the Caribbean in parentheses?” He shrugs.
“It was good fun while it
lasted, anyway . . .”

So,
how does it feel, if the end is indeed
in sight?

Um,
not
great, actually. I mean, the possibility of saying goodbye to Captain
Jack
forever is not something I look forward to. But
if that is the case, we
had a
good run. I enjoyed being him—he’s a lot of fun to
play. And
the fact is, with
all the different characters I play, they’re all still in
there and they show
up every now and again. So I expect I’ll see him some time.

Why
do you think audiences have taken to
him so much?

I
really
have no idea. I mean, I can only say that when I started out with the
character, my daughter was very, very young. She was about three or so,
and my
son was just born. So I’d spent three or four years watching
nothing but
cartoons. In my initial approach, what I thought would be the greatest
challenge was to create a character that a three-year-old would enjoy
and an
83-year-old would enjoy. That was my goal. And the main ingredient of
why I
think he works for me at least is irreverence. Just total irreverence.
Silliness. Not caring.

He
doesn’t care. And yet, he always has a
plan . . .

[Laughs] Oh yes, he’s always got
a plan!
Even when he doesn’t have a plan, he’s got a plan.
Amazingly, he always sort of
lands on his feet. He’s kind of feline in that way. He has
more than nine
lives, that’s for sure.

Even
after the success of the first film,
no-one was expecting the billion-dollar juggernaut that was Dead
Man’s Chest. Was it a
surprise to
you?

Uh,
yeah.
It was shocking. Still is. I’m sort of amazed that so many
people in so many
corners of the globe embraced the films and embraced the character.
It’s very
moving, you know. Nothing like this has ever happened to
me—and what’s happened
with Pirates hasn’t
happened to many
people. It’s very emotional, you know, the idea that people
feel this very
strong connection with Captain Jack. Seeing little kids dressed up as
him and
talking like him and stuff—it’s just amazing.

When
we last saw Jack he was getting scoffed
by a sea monster. So does that mean when we find him in At
World’s End he’s dead?

When
last
seen, Jack was swatting his way into the mouth of the Kraken, and when
we pick
him up again in Pirates 3
he’s in
Davy Jones’ Locker, which is kind of beyond the idea of
purgatory. It’s a hell,
you know—and he’s surrounded by himself.

By
himself? You mean there are going to be
different versions of Jack?

Yeah.
Which I thought was a really brilliant idea, you know. The idea of
taking this
guy and—it’s not facing your demons but facing the
various sides of your
personality. The fear. The extreme aggression . . . the lunatic that
you
know—just having to meet all of those various exciting
personalities that can
all exist inside one person.

So
you got to play many different aspects
of Captain Jack?

Yeah,
you
recognize him, but it’s like the major ingredients of that
person have been
separated so you get a really extreme version. The extreme
version of
rage and
aggression, you know. Anger. It’s
pretty interesting when you
think about it.
It was a great challenge.

How
did you manage to act against yourself?

There
was
a degree of pre-visual that I got to see, which was helpful, certainly.
But
what was really, really helpful was on the day when they were able to
do this
kind of ‘ghost’ mix, like a ghost image where you
see the two Jacks interact,
and then they add the third, and then the image fades a little bit
more, but
you get to see the interaction between the three. When you see
it’s working, it
juices you up.

Cool.
Although presumably you get rescued
from Davy Jones’ Locker at some point. How does that work?

Well,
they
realize that this sort of transit, you know, between the worlds, is
through the
green flash which is that moment when the sun touches the ocean at the
end of
the day . . . [Pause] I still
don’t
understand it. I’m going to go back and read the script at
some point!

At
World’s End
takes place more at sea, so were you required to act
underwater at any point?

Pretty
much, yeah. I mean, you’ve got a bunch of guys under there
with cameras and you
just do your bit. You do what’s called for. It’s
strange, you know. It was
definitely weird. But
at the same time it became kind of normal. Just
because
we’ve done so much and there have been so many moments on
this film where you
go, “God, this is the strangest thing I’ve ever
done!” It happens so often that
you just stop saying it. They tell you, “You’re
gonna do this scene
underwater.” And you say, “Okay. Fine.”
You know, you just drop down and do
your work and come up for air. It doesn’t even faze you any
more.

Chow
Yun-Fat plays a Singaporean pirate and
there’s also this thing called the Pirate Brethren Court in
the script . . .

Ah,
the
Brethren. The Brethren of the Coast. It’s the gathering of
all these sort of
pirate lords—all of the nine pirate lords. When an important
decision has to be
made, they summon the Brethren court and they refer to the
pirate’s code. And
yeah, in At World’s End
it’s very,
very necessary that the Brethren Court gets together as Beckett and his
corporation, the East India Trading Company, is taking over the
Caribbean.

So
Beckett’s back, then. Part two was
pretty tongue-in-cheek, but he’s got a bit of nastiness to
him . . .

Oh
yeah—he’s a real force to be reckoned with, what he
represents, you know, the
finance behind what he represents. He’s got big guns, man.
He’s got big guns
and big ships ready to annihilate anything that gets in their way. So
yeah,
he’s just evil, isn’t he? I mean, he’s
just so foul and nasty, Beckett. Tom
Hollander—who’s the sweetest guy in the
world—plays him so beautifully.

And
how does Jack get on with Elizabeth in
part three?

I
think
Jack wants to keep his distance on that, you know. I think he wants to,
well,
keep his back to the wall whenever Elizabeth is around. And probably to
some
degree Will as well. It’s just better for his health, I
reckon.

Is
it good to have Geoffrey Rush back?

Absolutely.
It’s great to have Geoffrey back and it’s great to
have Barbossa back in this
capacity, because it’s what Geoffrey and I always wanted to
do from the start. I
mean, in the first one we never had all that much time to bicker
between us,
we got a bit in. But in this one it’s like The
Odd Couple. We’re like a couple of old ladies
fighting over their knitting
needles or their space at the shuffle board court or something.
It’s fantastic.

So
we’ll get to see a little of what their
relationship was like before Jack was mutinied against, right back at
the
beginning?

Yeah,
exactly. You start to get the flavor of what it might have been like
when
Barbossa—Hector, as I like to call him—was Captain
Jack’s first mate before the
mutiny.

How
has your relationship with Gore, as
director, changed over the series? Have you gotten closer?

Oh
yeah. I
consider Gore to be one of my best friends. He’s a good man.
A real brother. I’ve never seen anything like this
guy—I really
haven’t. I
mean, sometimes you
do interviews and stuff and there are times when you have to, you know,
be
fraudulent in some of your answers. In
this case, though, genuinely, it
wasn’t
like that—it’s shocking what Gore is capable of.
It’s mind-boggling.

And
now, it’s nearly all over. You must be
looking forward to seeing the finished movie . . .

I’m
excited. I mean, there were scenes that we shot, a year to a year and a
half
ago—and sometimes they’ll connect directly to
something we’ve just shot. I just
can’t wait to see how all of those pieces are going to match
up, because you
walk in a door a year and half ago and then the day before
you’ve shot the
entrance to the room. It’s been a long ride, man.
It’s been a very long ride . . .

10
. . .
Icons Of Our Age
Johnny Depp

Any
way
you take him, he’s cool: goatee, glasses, cowboy hat,
smoking, non-smoking,
dressed up, dressed down, dressed as a woman. Or a pirate. Or a wonky,
wacko
sweet-seller . . He
can do anything.
Really well.

Yeah,
yeah. Be still our swooning hearts. But is there anyone out there who doesn’t
love Johnny
Depp? Total
Film’s
favorite actor of our lifetime was once considered the Marlon Brando of
his
generation [the pair worked together on Don
Juan DeMarco and the Depp-directed The
Brave]. But he spent the first half of his career
running
from the
mainstream, preferring to hang out with Hunter S Thompson and Shane
MacGowan
and ply his peerless skills for mates Burton [six times including the
forthcoming Sweeney Todd], Gilliam
and Jarmusch, than go all Hollywood [he turned down Interview
With the Vampire, Speed
and The Matrix].

But
when
Johnny got the invite from Jerry Bruckheimer to shiver his timbers in Pirates
of the Caribbean, he
couldn’t
resist. Dressing up like his mate Keef scored him a wider audience and
he
became an A-list icon overnight, finally scooping that long-overdue
first Oscar
nomination.

Over
the
years, Total Film has always found him warm, witty and satisfyingly
non-moviestar-ish. The best invite saw us bundled into Depp’s
Libertine trailer, as he kicked back
with a bottle of red wine and, as we remember, a touch of lilting
classical
music on his stereo.